Jersey Shore Massacre (Review)

JERSEY SHORE MASSACRE

You guessed it, “Jersey Shore Massacre” is a Horror/Comedy and parody of the reality TV show “Jersey Shore”. Producer and Director Paul Tarnopol (Girls Gone Dead) and Jennifer Farley (J wow, who was one of the cast on the show), join forces to bring us a spoof of all things JS, with a touch of slasher in the mix. A typical weekend on the shore for a group of 6 girls and 5 guidos (slang for working class urban male), takes a turn for the worse, when they become unsuspecting targets of a local psychopath. Teresa, (played by the lovely Danielle Dallacco) gets her uncle’s house in the woods so the group can party. The girls are Dina (Angelica Boccello), Joanne (Nicole Rutigliano), Valerie (Ashley Mitchell), Gigi (Christina Scaglione) and Rosemarie (Leonardo Bosch). They decide to go down to the beach before heading off. There, they meet Tony, Freddy, Vinnie, Gino and Joey. Played respectivly by Giovanni Roselli, Chris Lazzaro, Brenton Duplessie, Brett Azar and John Hastie. Now before we get started, when you hear the title you should know exactly what you’re in for. If you don’t like horribly self-centered people being killed off in gruesome and entertaining ways, you probably wont like JSM.

THE GOOD

I enjoyed the last film Paul Tarnopol worked on which was “Girls Gone Dead”. This film was made for an estimated $1.4 Million (similar to GGD). It’s the same genre, with very similar and equally as unlikable characters. Nobody is going to know these characters and their personalities better than Jennifer Farley. I assume she had a say in the casting and the tone of the film too. Her input is clearly evident when you watch this group interact with each other. I only watched bits and pieces of Jersey Shore, enough to see what type of people these guys and girls were. So when I heard about JSM my curiosity peaked. After all, how can you not like a bunch of over the top personalities coming together and meeting their demise in a really entertaining way

I think the majority of the cast are totally on the money for this entire film. From the thickest of the thick Joisy accents(see what I did there) ,to the incessant gum chewing, the forceful profanity and the dumb questions being asked and the equally dumber answers given in return, it truly has it all. Memorable one liners such as “We don’t eat meat were veterinarians” and “She’s got that stockholder syndrome thing”, made for a few chuckles. The girls are done up in a similar fashion to the girls on the show. Plenty of makeup, short tops, dresses and skirts and of course the fake boobs to go with it (doesn’t bother me). Now, I’ve read other reviewers had a problem with that. Some even labeling these girls hideous. What part of, This is a movie and they are playing characters do you not get?. Yes, these people happen to be based on those from the show, but if you take issue with the way they look then raise it with those who were actually on the show. Angelica and Danielle are the two girls with the most screen time and both look gorgeous and give enjoyable performances. Nicole Rutigliano and Nicky Figueredo supply us with the nudity. Both look in great shape, curvaceous and confident women and there’s nothing better than that.

It goes without saying that the ladies get to perve on a pretty bulked up male cast too. Try to remember these guys probably aren’t like the morons they are portraying (haha). Giovanni and Chris are the standouts but the others do enough to keep the quality high. Chris’s hyena laugh, replicating “Pauly D” from JS is perfect. It’s a horrible laugh that will no doubt get you laughing just because it’s so lame. These are the type of guys that wear bum bags, get spray tans and have to roofy girls in order to sleep with them, basically the worst of the worst. The film doesn’t hold back from showing how horrible these guys really are and you can’t help but enjoy the inevitable deaths. Jersey Shore Massacre looks and sounds great. The camera work is a mix of Steadicam, still shots and even some crane work, it all looks nice. The Forrest and the cabin/house made for a nice location to shoot in. The soundtrack and sound effects were consistent throughout. Some of the samples used during the three locks being turned on the door, amongst other unique sounds really stood out.

The thing all slasher fans want to know is does it deliver on the carnage and not just the comedy? Yes, for the most part it does. It’s key that you start your film off with a good early kill and JSM does, almost too good (given it’s the first one). From what I could see, everything in here was done with practical effects, the consistency of the blood is great. A couple of the standout kills involved a disembowelment, along with a horrific death in the shower, one of the best I’ve seen. I don’t want to ruin any of the other cool stuff in there so I will end it here.

THE BAD

The lighting was an issue in a few of the night-time scenes. There is a fine line between using too much light when your outside or not enough to show your actors faces properly. The scenes in the shed/barn (whatever it was), were most noticeably dark. It was frustrating because a couple of the characters were being killed off at the time and I couldn’t see what was happening. Some of the editing is a little rushed, a few scenes cut back and forth between inside the house and outside it. If something relevant to the story is happening in both locations then its fine but it wasn’t. I take issue with a roofy being included in the film. I don’t know whether that’s something the Jersey Shore guys actually did or if it was incorporated to make them look worse, either way it’s disgusting. People know the deal with them and it does happen, so you don’t need to make people anymore aware of it than they already are. There is nothing that led on from that scene anyways, so it could have just been cut. I don’t need to be reminded of how low guys can stoop.

There is a lull in the middle portion of the film where the girls go on an excursion in the so-called haunted woods, not sure why?. At least 20 minutes are taken up by club scenes, girls fighting and prolonged dancing, it felt very much like filler. The story needed to consist of a rising body count or some character development instead. In this case, I don’t think anything needed developing, everyone is pretty one-dimensional so get to the killing already. Even though there is a lot of cool practical effects and a decent body count, the camera still cuts away from the good stuff. I was hoping to see some more inventive kills, I know this doesn’t have the budget of something like “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre”, but gore lovers want to see as much as possible! The most disappointing part was a lost opportunity at a decapitation, which always gets the eyes rolling (pardon the pun haha), but they are a special effects lovers wet dream. The revelation of the killer is rather predictable so a little twist is thrown in. Unfortunately it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, nor has there been any clues eluding to it along the way. Motive and continuity aren’t clear-cut, it seems as though the killer ends up in all the right places without the audience seeing how he ever got there, it’s a little lazy in that respect.

Before I started writing this, I read the film had an average meta-critic score of 12/100. Guys seriously, it’s called “Jersey Shore Massacre” what were you expecting??. It blends the spoof on these self-indulgent, royal douchebagery people with your typical formulaic slasher, what more could you ask for?. The production value is great, the use of practical effects is always a plus and the cast absolutely nail it. If some of the writing in regards to the killer was addressed and some of the deaths were gorier and didn’t cut away, this would be the best self-aware Horror/comedy I’ve seen in a long time. I challenge you to not have fun with this when it’s got all “The Belgian whistles”, see what I did again (haha).

You also get a cool little short film starring YouTube personality Shawn C Phillips and the gorgeous Shea Stewart called “Fat Camp Massacre”.